Villa started the brighter team and certainly didn't look like a team that had only won one of of their last ten games. They managed to put the ball in the back of the net after only 10 minutes, but to City's relief it was ruled offside. Hitzlsperger's half volley from 20 yards out was pushed onto the post by City goalie Ian Walker, but the rebound fell to the offside Crouch.

Villa fans celebrated not realising, including a fool who ran onto the pitch. He was soon ejected by stewards.

City woke up a little bit and managed at least to have a couple of shots. Dickov heading straight at the Villa goalie, Enckelman, from an Oakes' cross, and Elliott doing similar from an Oakes' corner.

A couple of misses by Darius Vassell had the City fans chanting "If Vassell can play for England so can we". Tempting fate? Oh yes...

Villa counter attacked really well at every opportunity and often left City stranded with only a couple of defenders facing 4 or 5 Villa attackers. At least it made for an entertaining game. City fought on and Villa counter attacked so there was some entertaining end to end stuff, although City always looked as though they could concede whenever Villa got the ball.

On 22 minutes the Brummies executed such a counter attack and who was there to slot a low drive past Walker from some distance out? Darius Vassell of course.

The City defence glared at each other and had a bit of a go at each other. Micky has some work to do on that part of City's game to say the least.

City went straight for the equaliser and only 2 minutes later a good move found Lee Marshall in the box. But he was taken out by Jlloyd Samuel. Mr Poll had no hesitation in pointing to the spot. Muzzy Izzet stepped up and fired home - just. He sent it more down the middle than to the left as he usually does and it only just went over the diving goalie. 1-1.

It didn't last long though. Villa again countered a few minutes later and again absolutely breezed through City's midfield and defence who just stood off and watched them advance. Oakes failed to tackle Hitzlsperger who jiggled past him and he then shot through Elliott's legs to drive past Walker from 20 yards out.

The end to end stuff continued and City imediately missed out on eqaulising by centimeters. A great Dickov ball found Matt Piper in front of goal and he lobbed it towards goal. The City fans were up on their feet ready to celebrate Pipes' first City goal...no-one deserves it more. It hit the damn crossbar.

The second half started in a pretty similar fashion to how it it had ended the first so after 5 minutes Micky Adams made a couple of changes. He brought Oakes and Marshall off. Marshall had been doing ok, bit nothing earth shattering, and Oakes, apart from a few balls in had been pretty bloody woeful to be honest. Does he know what tackling is? And so many of his balls go astray. Not a good game for him.

On came tiny Jon Stevenson to partner equally tiny Dickov up front, and Ashton came on to play at left back. Not his favoured position, and he did make a couple of mistakes until he got into the game. But then he started to look rock solid and made some great tackles and clearances.

Stevenson is very small and looks a dwarf alongside players like Matt Elliott and Matt Heath. You could hear the crowd all have a little snicker when he came on. Then Walker took the goal kick and it went straight to Stevenson who leapt high to nod the ball on, beating a Villa player a lot taller than him. The crowd as a whole cheered and quickly worked out that in this case, size won't matter!

The City fans were expectently looking forward to some nice long throw ins from Ashton now he was on. At one stage City got a throw in down near the Kop. The ball had gone into the Villa fans and Ashton was waiting for them to throw it back to him. (The ball boy had already been moved by the police for his own safety after the Villa fans had thrown his seat around.)

The Villa knobhead with the ball deliberately tried to hit Ashton as hard as he could in the face with the ball. If looks could have killed Ashton would be doing life by now, but he kept his calm, and the thug was immediately grabbed by an alert steward and ejected from the ground.

Young Stevo, despite being even shorter than Dickov, put himself about and immediately injected some more pace up front. And skill. And optimism. The crowd could feel it straight away and were willing the little one on every time he got the ball.

Adams had said midweek he didn't want to put the two midgets up front together. But their height wasn't a problem at all. What was a slight problem is that they're so similar in style of play that they both wanted to be in the same place at the same time on a few occasions. I guess that means that young Stevo can already get in the right places and doesn't need Dickov to teach him much already!

Stevo had a few chances to have a pop at goal, and on 68 minutes he collected a chip from Sav and got in a shot that rebounded up off the goalie. Stevo nipped round the goalie and toe poked the rebound in. The City fans went nuts not only because we'd got an equaliser against the Brummies, but because it was Stevo who's got it. Cue lots of newspaper headlines about Stevenson's rocket...

He got his own chant a few minutes later.

Walker pulled off a couple of superb saves worthy of an England call up to keep the game level and City managed to get another point out of the game despite not being the better team on the day for a lot of the game. But they dug in and did what they had to do and the youngsters once again gave us all hope for the future.

The final whistle wasn't the end of the affair though. As the whistle went Paul Dickov was involved in a strange incident with George Boateng. As Dickov was tackled realy late by Boateng, Dickov's boot came off.

Boateng for some inexplicable reason picked the boot up and tried to throw it onto the roof of the East Stand!?!

Dickov went ballistic and the red mist descended. Luckily the lino was on the case and got to Dickov before he could get Boateng! It took a fair few players to hold him back from getting at Boateng.

The behaviour of some of the Villa fans (apart from all the stuff mentioned above chants of "You're just a small town in India" and "Pakistan, Pakistan" cannot go unmentioned either) really will mean we won't miss them at all next season. Real Villa fans should be ashamed of their so called fellow "fans" and do something about them.